i want jls to win the x factor. i also love alex but think she’ll do well whatever happens now. i can’t stand diana or eoghan! even though i’m not a fan of rock music, I liked ruth and loved her purple rain performance.

but i just love jls, there are so many reasons why it would be good for them to win. they’re talented, seem to be really nice people and just work really well together. they should have sung ‘born to make you happy’ on saturday night, by the way.

god i would be such a better mentor than louis although several million other could claim the same thing. loving james corden slating britney – the idea that she has a back catalogue worthy of a theme is pathetic. given that she’s in cahoots with brian friedman it wasn’t that difficult to negotiate her appearance, surely?

ruth is now urging her fans to support jls and alex – good for her, and this speaks volumes about the brattish behaviour of diana and eoghan. diana appears to believe her own hype and eoghan clearly believes simon’s relentless ‘you’re the one to beat’ mantra. simon – you can keep saying it but it won’t become true.

interesting that in a week where diana was told to tone down her quirkiness, she took it to new levels by actually snarling into the mic during ‘everybody hurts’. the judges, even cheryl, clearly have time for her after the fake laryngitis hissy fit, alleged diva strop when she wasn’t given a song she liked last week and now possibly bringing the show into disrepute if the rumours that she is pregnant with eggnog’s child are true.

eggnog…i mean, who the fuck is voting for this talentless irksome brat? be ashamed of yourselves.

so far this series is shaping up much better than the last. of course the judges have made mistake in their choices. especially simon, who needs a new sidekick to replace sinitta, a woman who not only wants us to believe that she’s been 39 for the last ten years, but who also allowed mali-michael to slip away in favour of a fucking bluecoat.

let me preface what i’m about to say by admitting that i have never had any time for cheryl cole and think she’s the weakest singer in girls aloud. BUT she is the only judge who got her top 3 spot on. louis needs to give up on the 90s, simon needs to stop trying to hoist demonic kids on the general public and dannii…needs to learn about the music industry. and then she might not only become a better judge but also find out why her career was such a damp squib that she was still doing guest spots more than ten years after arriving on the scene.

let’s hope the rumours that sharon will return to replace spoon face are true.

as is tradition, these are the songs they should sing, but won’t cos…they just won’t.

looks like he was brought up on crisps. he’ll need to overcome the slightly mangy air he has about him if he doesn’t want to repel the snootier class of x factor voter with his caravantastic style.

bad lashes

sugababes – overload

bit too desperate, not at all surprising to me that they received the boot in the first week. when will girls who try too hard to be alternative realise that this completely misses the point they were trying to make…

daniel

simply red – you’ve got it

they took it a bit too far with the sympathy vote this year…when it comes to picking finalists you have to put emotion aside. that said, his ricky gervais inspired performance last week was supremely entertaining, for all the wrong reasons.

diana

tasmin archer – sleeping satellite

the music diana would make would be a million miles from the type of thing i would ever listen to, but i just about get why shes in the finals. she reminds me a bit, unfortunately, of the girl who claimed to invent indie music, said something racist and got slung out of big brother last year.

eoghan

stevie wonder – sir duke (because he couldn’t and then he’d get the boot – yay!)

x factor law dictates that there is always a token irish contestant who’s shit but provides louis with a valuable opportunity to remind everyone why they don’t take his decisions at all seriously, at each once a series. remember those hideous conway sisters? this one looks like a cross between jamie oliver and a vole.

girlband

don’t care…oh they should just go all out to escape the boot by singing a girls aloud song – chemistry

won’t win unless hell freezes over. how this lot got through i have no idea…girls aloud’s success is completely owed to stylists and producers. not louis walsh. this lot might as well rename themselves ‘girls are loud’ and start impersonating them at student unions.

love them. there are so many reasons why they should win and i hope they do. whether they’ll strike the right note with the sat-at-home chavs who vote thirty times a night is another matter. there are so many potential songs for them…I’d like to see them take it back to the 80s at some point.

laura

keyshia cole – i just want it to be over

has a funny mouth. whether or not this will endear her to voters or put them off their chicken korma remains to be seen. is undeniably talented but it’s so obvious with some of these really young contestants that they’ve grown up imitating certain singers and you start to wonder whether’s it’s really ‘them’.

you know how it is when you have a boss who is shit at their job and you not so secretly believe that you know better? that was all over rachel’s face last week. dannii made herself and robyn, who could but wish to be able to sing like rachel, look like muppets.

ruth

jennifer lopez – if you had my love

not a very spanish name, ruth, is it? that girl has the biggest hair i’ve ever seen too. i bet she needs a lot of product to keep it under control. i think my hair might be spanish. she’s going to run out of recognisable latin songs to sing…but she might as well put jennifer lopez’s vocal skills in perspective while she’s at it.

the bluecoat

take that – pray

i couldn’t give a shit what his name is. he’s not even a redcoat, for fuck’s sake. at least butlins had those cool indoor swimming things with the flumes, back in the day. anyway, anyone who can’t even stand up to a mentor who makes them sing a 23 year old song by matt bianco has got no chance. what on earth was simon thinking? does he not even want to win anymore?

possibly just meant to sound happy, not kitsch, but this remix conjures up images of bubbles, flying candy and glitter and there’s nothing amerie can do about it…

basement jaxx – romeo

you can tell the jaxx heart kitsch by their album covers, even if you haven’t heard the music. who else would put snowflake, the albino gorilla from barcelona zoo, on a cd?

bjork – big time sensuality

more quirky than kitsch, but bjork does look a bit like a japanese cartoon.

confection – i gotta thang 4u

confection are a group who make 80s jheri soul a la loose ends. i honestly didn’t realise for a long time that they weren’t authentic 80s.

daft punk – digital love

kids of the 80s went ‘aaaah…’ when they saw the video to this tune, featuring battle of the planets style anime.

deee-lite – say ahhh

unashamedly kitsch, and psychedelic at the same time.

groove armada and mutya buena – song for mutya

whoever thought they would be describing the chavtastic mutya as kitsch? not me…

keyshia cole – superstar

hate jameila. this is the only song of hers that i could remotely stand so i was happy that keyshia covered it for the us market. clearly, bitter brummie bitches don’t go down too well across the pond, either…

mariah carey – touch my body

eternally 12 apparently…mariah is the physical embodiment of kitsch and youth obsession taken too far. and no i don’t buy the nick cannon thing, that boy just looks uncomfortable to me.

model 500 – the flow

i doubt that derrick may intended to make anything that sounded remotely kitsch. but it so does…

st etienne – who do you think you are

if all of st etienne’s video has been animated kitsch, i think their music would have been more appealing. i liked it, but the oh-look-at-us-we’re indie!-and-quirky! band members ruined things somewhat.

sub sub and melanie williams – ain’t no love

the most cartoonish club classic i can remember – shouldn’t have worked but it did.

i do have some friends with totally polarised music taste to my own. to be fair, they are more accommodating and will dance to my music when they’re pissed. bar a situation in which i have drunk a vat of absinthe and can only see colours and feel sounds, nothing can induce me to listen to anything guitar-based.

jay-z has never been a favourite of mine for that very reason – he embraces rock music and he’s the only hiphop act aforementioned friends own cds by. noel gallagher really is showing how irrelevant and archaic his perspective is. the same noel gallagher who was happy to be supported by prodigy, chemical brothers and other dance acts in knebworth 12 years ago.

now, the fact that i’ve managed to construct an entire post from the glasto lineup and actually watched some of it – that’s progression. fuck bush AND noel gallagher.

shakin’ stevens? i don’t think most of the glasto-goers are old enough to get the irony, but whatever. i had no idea so many genres were covered, albeit in a minor way compared to the dull faceless indie bands.

i can barely be bothered to watch the american idol final on itv2 tonight now that i know snoozefest david cook has won. ooh lets kills every assigned song with exactly the same grunge rock arrangement. how clever.

grandparent favourite david archuleta was obviously not a hugely better prospect but at least he wasn’t a throwback to the early 90s unless you think the fact that he was born in 1990 qualifies that comparison. neither of them are a leona, hell, they’re not even a jordin sparks. i’m even going to go out on a limb here and say i preferred carrie unde-robot-wood and taylor ‘father ted’ hicks.

god i just didn’t really care that much about any of the contestants after chikezie went. he peaked too early with ‘i believe to my soul’. i liked syesha but she clearly wasn’t as good as similar artists from previous years, like vonzell a few years back.

do kids still listen to complaint rock? seriously? i didn’t believe it in the 90s and i don’t believe it now. scenes of kids jumping up and down on their bed playing air guitar are always the most unrealistic elements of any movie or tv show for me, and I didn’t know anyone who did that.

at least we had a few who were enjoyably shit keeping up the sanjaya malakar/that stupid marine/jasmine trias tradition. that er, jason er…dreads bloke, clinched the cringe of the ‘season’ with his double bob marley massacre. jason castro, just looked it up. kristy lee cook was unenjoyably shit. brooke white looked like a little old alien, like gail from corrie…

doubtless there will be another ‘season’ so here are some of the better performances from the last 6 years…

now, witnessing the desperation of hard candy, i can concede that she was at least still relevant until about 2002. i just hate the ‘producer of the moment’, ‘collaboration of the moment’ and ‘fad of the moment’ bandwagon-jumping – william orbit, justin, mylo, ali g…

she is one of few artists to make it to their second greatest hits album. i’ll laugh if there’s a third…

so. my original post dealt with everything up to gambler. whilst i preferred the ragdoll who stuck two fingers up to the world, i did love her late 80s songs at the time, and even a few past then.

in the summer of 1986, the arrival of true blue did give madonna fans something new to make up dances to. just hearing the intro to this song transports me back to my old bedroom, with the sun streaming in.

la isla bonita

mainstay of junior school assemblies and talent shows the country wide, if you didn’t love this, and dirty dancing, in 1987, you weren’t a real girl. how annoying were all those people who insisted the title was ‘last night i dreamt of san pedro’ because they didn’t know how to pronounce ‘isla’…joey!

causing a commotion

i remember the cartoon video for this being very cute. madonna’s acting in the film was of course, atrocious, and she had the most annoying squeaky voice. i liked the cougar better.

express yourself

you can’t argue with the sentiment here and it’s probably one of her best songs. lots of remixes…i remember a housey version from top of the pops that i haven’t heard since.

til death do us part

written about her marriage to sean penn, i found it interesting at the time but didn’t understand it. now it makes me cry. she always says sean was the one…

like a prayer

this is the original version, not the horrible immaculate collection butchering. that entire album was a disgrace. if madonna ever actually needed the cash, she could just release a proper greatest hits with all the original unmixed 80s songs.

cherish

well i did love this song at the time, as did everyone else. it was just so happy. not liking ‘cherish’ would be like not liking kittens.

deeper and deeper

ok, i proper loved this one. but madonna should never get more housey than this, and vogue. madonna, for me, inhabits a time before house music.

take a bow

her only decent ballad other than crazy for you. this was from the ‘secrets’ phase, post-erotica. although she didn’t really hit rock-bottom until about 1996 and that junior vasquez track – ‘if madonna calls, i’m not home…’. still, where’s junior?

don’t tell me

the one and only 00s madonna song i like. music, hung up…just nothing to me. way too obvious. this isn’t amazing, it just kind of works.